Nigeria closed 64.9% of its gender gap in 2025 according to the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap report, ranking 124th out of 146 countries. But the headline number is more optimistic than the actual situation. Women are joining the workforce in record numbers while simultaneously losing ground in politics, education, and health.

Why This Matters

Gender parity is about economic growth. When women participate equally in the economy but earn 40% less than men, Nigeria leaves billions of naira on the table. When ministerial representation drops by half in a single year, policy priorities shift away from issues affecting half the population. The gap between women’s labor participation and their actual power reveals how fragile progress can be.

What’s Working Well

Nigeria improved its overall score in one critical area: Economic Participation and Opportunity, gaining 3.6 percentage points. Women’s labor force participation hit its highest recorded level, bringing the participation gap to near-parity at 95.6%. Female income also recovered after a four-year decline, rising from 50.1% to 60.4% of male income.

What is Not Working

But the other three pillars suffer setbacks. Political Empowerment dropped 2.9 points as women’s ministerial representation was cut in half, from 17.6% in 2024 to 8.8% in 2025. Educational attainment is stagnant despite rising literacy rates for both genders, because male literacy (73.7%) grew faster than female literacy (53.3%). Health and Survival also saw declining parity as men’s healthy life expectancy improved more than women’s.

Reality Check

Women are working at similar rates to men but earning far less. The 40-percentage-point gap between labor participation parity (95.6%) and income parity (60.4%) point to a few markers: women are concentrated in lower-paying sectors, they are doing more unpaid care work that doesn’t show up in income statistics, and the informal economy is absorbing women’s labor without compensating it fairly. Under the current administration, women went from holding nearly one in five ministerial positions to less than one in ten.

The Bottom Line

Nigeria’s gender gap story is one of uneven progress and active regression. Women are showing up to work, but the systems that determine their pay, their political voice, and even their health outcomes are moving in the wrong direction.